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Vermont ranks eighth in the nation for child well-being

Vermont ranks eighth in the nation for child well-being

Economic progress stalls and is threatened even more by a precarious census in 2020Vermont Business Magazine This year, Vermont ranks eighth for overall child well-being, according to the 2018 KIDS COUNT Data Book released in June by the Annie E Casey Foundation. Vermont ranked third last year and was as high as second in 2014 and 2013. New Hampshire and Massachusetts went one-two in 2018, as they did in 2017. Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico ranked at the bottom.

The annual KIDS COUNT Data Book uses 16 indicators to rank each state across four domains — health, education, economic well-being and family and community — as an assessment of child well-being. While Vermont compares favorably in the domains of education, health, and family and community, the state’s relatively low rankings in the economic well-being domain point to similar trends in inequality as are seen nationwide. Vermont ranks:

• Third in the family and community domain. The teen birth rate in the state is the fourth lowest in the country. Only 1 percent of kids — the lowest rate in the United States — live in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 30 percent or more. Vermont is 23rd for the percentage of kids in families headed by a single parent, but only 6 percent of kids live in households headed by someone who doesn’t have at least a high-school diploma.

• Fifth in education. Vermont ranks among the top 10 states in the nation for all four indicators in this domain: 53 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds attend preschool and 88 percent of high-school students graduate on time; and Vermont ranks third among states for proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading and 10th for math.

• 10th in health. Only 2 percent of children in Vermont lack health insurance. The rate of teens who have abused drugs or alcohol in the past year is the same as the country as a whole — 5 percent. Vermont ranks 13th for child and teen mortality. The percentage of babies born at a low birthweight — 6.9 percent — remains consistently below the national rate.

• 26th in economic well-being. Vermont ranks 16th in the nation for the rate of kids in poverty (15 percent). In a related indicator, 27 percent of kids live in households where no parent has full-time, year-round employment, which puts the state at 23rd for that indicator. Thirty percent of children live in households spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, placing Vermont in 29th place for this “high-housing cost burden.” And 7 percent of young people ages 16 to 19 are neither attending school nor working —giving Vermont a rank of 23rd in this indicator and an increase from previous years.

In addition to the rankings, this year’s Data Book also draws attention to an issue that has advocates concerned: the importance of the census, specifically the 2020 decennial census.

This once-a-decade count is the basis for funding numerous federal programs in states and communities. In 2015, almost $400 million was distributed to Vermont via programs like Medicaid for children, SNAP, WIC, the school lunch program and others. Young children have historically been undercounted in the census. When children aren’t counted, the programs that serve them are underfunded.

“This issue isn’t just about compiling data. It’s actually fraught with the most critical issues we are facing: inclusiveness, democracy, privacy and money,” said Sarah Teel, research director at Voices for Vermont’s Children.

Much of the concern focuses on the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census — a last-minute decision by the Trump administration that is being challenged by multiple lawsuits.

“If the census is designed to discourage people from participating, as it appears this one may be, it amounts to deliberate disenfranchisement and disregard,” said Teel.

The census also determines congressional representation and electoral votes for states and is used to draw state and local voting districts. For these reasons, a census that doesn’t count substantial numbers of people — who may be “hard to count” for a variety of reasons — also threatens a fair and representative democracy.

Low-income children, children of color and kids living in immigrant families and in rural areas stand to be disproportionately undercounted, while also having the most to lose as vital programs face reductions in funding and undercounted people and families lose their share of political representation.

Laura Speer, associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Casey Foundation, said reliable data, particularly census data, are critical to informing decisions that improve the lives of America’s children. “An inaccurate census threatens to undermine essential resources for communities and erode many of the advancements made in recent years for our children — particularly children of color — for years to come,” Speer said.

State

Year

Data

New Hampshire

2018

1

Massachusetts

2018

2

New Jersey

2018

3

Minnesota

2018

4

Iowa

2018

5

Utah

2018

6

Connecticut

2018

7

Vermont

2018

8

Nebraska

2018

9

Virginia

2018

10

North Dakota

2018

11

Wisconsin

2018

12

Kansas

2018

13

Maryland

2018

14

Washington

2018

15

Maine

2018

16

Pennsylvania

2018

17

Wyoming

2018

18

Rhode Island

2018

19

Colorado

2018

20

Idaho

2018

21

Illinois

2018

22

Montana

2018

23

Hawaii

2018

24

Ohio

2018

25

Missouri

2018

26

Delaware

2018

27

Indiana

2018

28

South Dakota

2018

29

Oregon

2018

30

New York

2018

31

North Carolina

2018

32

Michigan

2018

33

Florida

2018

34

Tennessee

2018

35

California

2018

36

Kentucky

2018

37

South Carolina

2018

38

Georgia

2018

39

West Virginia

2018

40

Arkansas

2018

41

Alabama

2018

42

Texas

2018

43

Oklahoma

2018

44

Arizona

2018

45

Alaska

2018

46

Nevada

2018

47

Mississippi

2018

48

Louisiana

2018

49

New Mexico

2018

50

Overall Ranks for 2018 for each state using a consistent set of indicators; namely those used to derive the rank reported in the 2018 KIDS COUNT Data Book.

Casey Foundation: The overall rank for each state was obtained in the following manner. First, we converted the 2016 (or 2014/2015, depending on the indicator) state numerical values for each of the 16 key indicators into standard scores. We summed those standard scores within their domains to create a domain standard score for each of the 50 states. We then summed the four domain standard scores to get a total standard score for each state. Finally, we ranked the states on the basis of their total standard score in sequential order from highest/best (1) to lowest/worst (50). Standard scores were derived by subtracting the mean score from the observed score and dividing the amount by the standard deviation for that distribution of scores. All measures were given the same weight in calculating the total standard score.

Additional information is available at www.aecf.org/databook, which also contains the most recent national, state and local data on hundreds of indicators of child well-being. Journalists interested in creating maps, graphs and rankings in stories about the Data Book can use the KIDS COUNT Data Center at datacenter.kidscount.org.

Voices for Vermont’s Children is a statewide, multi-issue, independent nonprofit that promotes public policy to enhance the lives of children and youth in Vermont. For more information, visit www.voicesforvtkids.org. Follow Voices for Vermont’s Children and this issue on Twitter @voices4vtkids and on Facebook.

About the Annie E. Casey Foundation

The Annie E. Casey Foundation creates a brighter future for the nation’s children by developing solutions to strengthen families, build paths to economic opportunity and transform struggling communities into safer and healthier places to live, work and grow. For more information, visit www.aecf.org. KIDS COUNT® is a registered trademark of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.